[SOLVED] Corrupted images on displaying

[pacahon]

Hello!

I'm trying to figure out the cause of a problem that I experience in all browsers and browser-like applications - images could be corrupted on displaying (example in "Screenshots" spoiler).
I have other weird behaviors on my PC (can't install discord, some games crash on start with event 1000 error code), but this one is the most annoying.

After some research I found out that the problem occurs only with images in WEBP format.
If I locally open an image in webp format in any browser and keep reloading the page, at least 1 out of 10 times it will be corrupted. The same image in jpeg/png format works fine.


What I did trying to narrow down the problem:

1. Checked that this behavior is preserved in Firefox/Tor/Chrome/Edge on Windows 10, Firefox in Ubuntu Live
2. Removed discrete video card from MB and tried step 1 with an integrated graphics card
3. Enabled/Disabled hardware acceleration in browsers

My system spec https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/45470138

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K
GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070S (Super) Gygabyte
SSD: Viper M.2 VPN100 512GB
SSD: Samsung 860 Evo 1TB
HDD: WD Black 1TB (2013)
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR4 3200 C16 2x16GB
MBD: Asrock Z390 Taichi Ultimate

How to find out is it a hardware or software problem? What should I try next? Thanks for any advice!

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You forgot to mention the make and model of your PSU and it's age. Can you check and see what BIOS version you're on at the time of writing? You should also check and see what your OS version is. For BIOS, you can use CPU-Z, for the version of SO, Right click Start>Left click System, the version number should be on the bottom of new window. What version of Chrome/Firefox are you on?

Have you tried sourcing the latest GPU driver for your discrete GPU from Nvidia, using DDU to remove all traces of GPU drivers, rebooting into Safe Mode then reinstalling GPU drivers manually in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator?

By any chance are you on a dual boot?

 

[pacahon]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You forgot to mention the make and model of your PSU and it's age. Can you check and see what BIOS version you're on at the time of writing? You should also check and see what your OS version is. For BIOS, you can use CPU-Z, for the version of SO, Right click Start>Left click System, the version number should be on the bottom of new window. What version of Chrome/Firefox are you on?

Have you tried sourcing the latest GPU driver for your discrete GPU from Nvidia, using DDU to remove all traces of GPU drivers, rebooting into Safe Mode then reinstalling GPU drivers manually in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator?

By any chance are you on a dual boot?

Hello, Lutfij!

PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 750W (2 years old)
BIOS version: P4.30
OS build: 19043.1202
Edge version: 93.0.961.38 (Official build) (64-bit)
Firefox version: 91.0.2
GPU driver: 471.96 (Game Ready Driver)

Maybe it's worth to mention that I have this kind of problem right from the start when I built my PC 2 years ago. I use it only for games and if I can launch a game, usually everything goes smooth without crashes, corrupted images, etc. I've never seen any artifacts in the game.

I can try to uninstall/reinstall GPU driver for my discrete card but I experience the same problem with corrupted images even after removing the card from the slot. Should I still try it?
Right now I'm not on a dual boot, but previously I had Ubuntu as a second OS in dual boot and I experienced the same behavior as in Ubuntu Live.

 

[Grobe]

Afaik the video card aren't responsible for decoding images, for that you must use CPU and RAM. I assume the webp images themself are in good condition - can install XnView or Irfanview to view - and that you have tested the same images on a different computer.

If the webp images appear normally on other devices, then proceed:

Since you have tried different OS and as far I can understand of what you write here, the same issue still exist.

Therefore I'll suggest you checking the RAM, use Memtest86+ that should be found in the boot menu of Ubuntu (that you already have). Make it run for several hours or overnight so that it can detect any fault to RAM.

 

[SkyNetRising]

How to find out is it a hardware or software problem? What should I try next? Thanks for any advice!

Those seem like video codec errors.

Update video codecs on your pc.
https://shark007.net/advanced.html

 

[pacahon]

Afaik the video card aren't responsible for decoding images, for that you must use CPU and RAM. I assume the webp images themself are in good condition - can install XnView or Irfanview to view - and that you have tested the same images on a different computer.

If the webp images appear normally on other devices, then proceed:

Since you have tried different OS and as far I can understand of what you write here, the same issue still exist.

Therefore I'll suggest you checking the RAM, use Memtest86+ that should be found in the boot menu of Ubuntu (that you already have). Make it run for several hours or overnight so that it can detect any fault to RAM.

Thanks for the reply! I ran Memtest86+ tests for 6 hours - no errors at all. Interesting that webp images look fine in XnView every time I reopen it with ctrl + R, but become corrupted from time to time in FF/Edge (while on a different PC they works fine in a browser) Could be the problem related to MB? I'm not really sure what else to try.

 

[pacahon]

Those seem like video codec errors.

Update video codecs on your pc.
https://shark007.net/advanced.html

Thanks! Unfortunately, it didn't help :<

 

[Grobe]

I also use webp image format because for my usage webp outperform both jpg and png.

But I have never came across the issue you describe here, so I have to ask what source (software) have you used to generate those webp images? This issue should be possible to solve.

 

[pacahon]

I also use webp image format because for my usage webp outperform both jpg and png.

But I have never came across the issue you describe here, so I have to ask what source (software) have you used to generate those webp images? This issue should be possible to solve.

https://www.youtube.com/ - thumbnails (e.g.) are in a webp format 🙁

 

[dorsai]

Do you have your browser(s) set up to delete all files in the cache when shut down ? Forcing the page to load a fresh copy every time may resolve the issue.

 

[pacahon]

Do you have your browser(s) set up to delete all files in the cache when shut down ? Forcing the page to load a fresh copy every time may resolve the issue.

Sorry for the late response. It doesn't help either. 🙁 I tried to disable cache in devtools (ctrl + shift + I) -> network panel

 

[Grobe]

It puzzles me that you have tried different OS with same results, so I think we need to check some more things.

Can we assume that those are common factors?

• Your computer ?
• Your network ?

So I'm thinking since you pretty much ruled out HW error, I think that the network is the only thing left.

Therefore please try to test:

• Different computer on that same network.
• Move your computer to another network (maybe use a phone to share internet through usb).

Do you have your browser(s) set up to delete all files in the cache when shut down ? Forcing the page to load a fresh copy every time may resolve the issue.

Note that OP has already tested out Ubuntu Live, and that already give a clean browser test.

 

[pacahon]

Different computer on that same network.

Everything works fine on other PCs on the same network, both LAN and Wifi connections (10 years old iMac, old samsung R780 with Windows 7)

Move your computer to another network (maybe use a phone to share internet through usb).

I didn't mention it in the original post, but I tested network interface:

• LAN connection with/without router (local ISP)
• Wi-Fi connection with local ISP and cellular network
• Disabled Windows 10 built-in real-time protection, dropped dns caches, etc (everything I could find on the Internet)

Finally I realized that the problem is reproducible locally - I just need to download any webp image and open it in a browser. That's why I decided the problem is not related to the network, but maybe I'm wrong.

Here is a demo (Note: caching images makes things even worse)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVM8cLcfD44

 

[dorsai]

Since you've tried removing the 2070 super, run memtest for 6 hrs without errors, and also have this issue running a different OS then this is sounding like a cpu hardware issue.

If the BIOS of your motherboard allows you to disable cpu cores you should try turning off half of them, or even all but 1, and see if the problem persists.

Are you always pulling the webp files from the same storage drive ? If so, have you tried placing a webp file on your other drives and accessing from there ?

 

[pacahon]

Since you've tried removing the 2070 super, run memtest for 6 hrs without errors, and also have this issue running a different OS then this is sounding like a cpu hardware issue.

If the BIOS of your motherboard allows you to disable cpu cores you should try turning off half of them, or even all but 1, and see if the problem persists.

Are you always pulling the webp files from the same storage drive ? If so, have you tried placing a webp file on your other drives and accessing from there ?

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll post an answer after I try them. (I haven't tried to load images from other drives)

 

[pacahon]

Since you've tried removing the 2070 super, run memtest for 6 hrs without errors, and also have this issue running a different OS then this is sounding like a cpu hardware issue.

If the BIOS of your motherboard allows you to disable cpu cores you should try turning off half of them, or even all but 1, and see if the problem persists.

Are you always pulling the webp files from the same storage drive ? If so, have you tried placing a webp file on your other drives and accessing from there ?

Wow. Thanks for the gold advice! Loading images from another drive doesn't help, but setting fewer active cores (actually 5 of 8) in UEFI configuration helped to get rid off all weirdness on my PC!

Active Processor Cores
Select the number of cores to enable in each processor package

Sad I can't control what cores are really active. So I have 5 cores / 5 threads. (don't know why this setting cutting off number of threads per core)

Now I'm curious - is it really a problem of my CPU or MB. If it choose cores randomly - it could be both. If active cores are ordered - it still could be both
Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool shows everything is OK with my CPU, but Intel wrote this tool and it's kinda unfair testing.